EAL  Estate  Record





AND BUILDERS' GUIDE,





Vol. XXVIII.





NEW TOEK, SATUEDAT, JULY 2, 1881





No. €94





Published Weekly by The

Real Estate Record Association

TERMS:
ONE YEAR, in advance   -   -   -   -   -   $6.00

Commtmications should be addressed to

€. W. SWEET, 13T Broadway.

J. T. LINDSEY, Busmess Manager.

The talk about Manhattan Company bor¬
rowing money to pay dividends is nothing
but twaddle. The Manhattan Company
pays no dividends, never has, and if the
present direction is kept in power, never
will. The Manhattan Company has a lease
of the New York and. Metropolitan Elevated
Railway Companies, and their property, for
which it pays a rental equivalent to 10 per
cent on the respective capital stocks of the
two companies, and after this is paid, the
New York and Metropolitan companies de¬
clare their dividends.

The Manhattan has as clearly a right to
boiTOw money, if it can find people willing
to lend it to pay these rents as any company
or individual, and there is no law against it.





One of the indications of the remarkable
interest in real estate, is the large additions
which have recently been made to the sub¬
scription list of the Real Estate Record.
With very little soliciting the number of our
subscribers has greatly increased witliin three
months time. This, in part, was no doubt
due to the reduction in the price of the paper.
But quite apart from that, it is evident that
thousands of people are interested in real
estate doings, who formerly paid no atten¬
tion to prices or properties. Notwithstand¬
ing the few and unimportant offermgs, the
Real Estate Exchange is crowded whenever
there is a sale. The list of conveyances is
surprisingly large for tliis time of the year
and the official plans for new buildings teU
their own story of the wonderful activity in
the constraction of new and costly houses.
Stocks may be dull, general markets inac¬
tive, but real estate transactions continue
large. While there is no boom or excitement
prices steadily tend upward.





On Fourteenth street, juiit east of the
Union Square theatre, some candy stores,
stables and barber shops have been changed
into stores suitable for first-class retail busi¬
ness. It is wonderful that property holders
were so long in finding out the value of
Union Square and Fourteenth street for re¬
tail trade. The great majority of the street
cars from east and west, as well as from
north and south, pass by Union Square. If
the calculation could be made, we think it
could be shown that there are more people
passing through Fourteenth street from
Sixth avenue to the Bowery, than on any
other street of eqiial length in New York
The crowd embraces more women than men
and are nearly all of the buying class. No
doubt, the time is coming when every house
OU Fourteenth street between Sixth avenue





and the Bowery, will be either a store or
place of refreshment, for no city improve¬
ment is likely to diminish the crowds that
throng on that thoroughfare.





The application for a portion of the Park
to accommodate the Brooklyn Bridge ap¬
proaches, is having one good result. It em¬
phasizes the necessity for a new HaU of
Records. The present building is in every
way inadequate for the storing of the records
which are so vitally important to property
holders in this city. Real estate transac¬
tions are now so large that the records
are becoming voluminous, and require a
large, roomy, incombustible structure in
which to store them. It should not only be
fireproof but mob proof. By all means let
the Brooklyn Bridge people have what they
want, for if it involves the removal of the
Hall of Records, so mucli the better for the
real estate interest.





RAPID TRANSIT ON TERRA FIRMA,
The approval by the Governor of the
amendments to the Beach charter for an
underground road, makes it possible that in
addition to its elevated road system, New
York may soon have underground transit
from the Battery to the Forty-second street
depot. The Central underground road may
be considered as a '"dead cock in the pit." It
has done nothing but publish extravagant
programmes in the newspapers, for the last
seven years. Even if it could raise the
money to construct the work, it would be
objectionable from every point of view.
After the pleasant open air traveling on the
elevated roads, our city people would not be
willing to ride in a dark underground tun¬
nel. But as we understand it, the amend¬
ments to the Beach charter admit of the
building of an underground street, the trav¬
eling on which will be as pleasant as in the
open air. It is, in fact, the old Arcade plan
revived, and if constructed, would give the
city a new Broadway ixnder the pavement
of the present avenue. There will be room
for through as well as way trains ; baggage
and freight could be transported without
difficulty. It will admit of sidewalks for
pedestrians, and ordinary vehicles can travel
it, thus relieving the present Broadway sur¬
face of its swollen traffic.

Admirable as is our system of elevated
roads, it does not give us rapid transit. The
time from South Ferry to the Harlem River,
on the east side elevated, is forty-five min¬
utes. From Forty-second street to One Hun¬
dred and Twenty-ninch street is twenty-seven
minutes. Contrast this with the sunken
track of the Harlem road, from Forty-sec¬
ond street to Morrisiania, making all the
stops, the time is only eighteen minutes.
On the Hudson River road, from Forty-sec¬
ond street to Morris dock, just this side of
Kingsbridge, the time is seventeen minutes,
making all the stops on the so-called Dolly
Varden trains. In other words, steam trav¬
eling on terra firma is about three times as
fast as the elevated roads.   What is needed





for the annexed district, therefore, is some
communication to the lower parts of the
city on a surface underground trar-k, with
a roadbed that would accommodate freight
and packages as well as passengers. The
proper persons to build the Arcade road
below Forty-second street, would be the
Vanderbilt family or some of the leading
stockholders in the Central and Hudson
River road. It would be an indisputable
benefit to New York were this work under¬
taken, and would not interfere with the ele¬
vated roads, which would have an abun¬
dance of work to do in conveying passen¬
gers on the east and westsid^sof the city.
But so long as the trains make numerous
stoppages, it will not be possible to give
the district north of the Harlem River
the rapid transit demanded by those who
wish to reside in the upper wards and to do
business on the lower part of New York
island. It ought to be possible for a passen¬
ger to take an underground car at the corner
of Broadway and Wall street and be carried
five miles beyond the Harlem River, by way
of the Forty second street depot, within
thirty-five minutes. When this can be
done, the annexed district will fill rapidly
with population at the expense of Brooklyn
and New Jersey,

But a tunnel is not to be thought of. A
well lighted and ventilated underground
street, which would make Broadway the
most valuable property on earth, is what is
needed. It would pay the Broadway prop¬
erty holders five times over w>re they to
construct such a sub-street. But they have
shown such extraordinary blindness as to
their own interests in times past, that this
work is not likely to be done by them. Nor
is it probable that the Vanderbilt's will
undertake the work, although it is clearly
in their interest so' to do. We fear the
Arcade scheme will not be realized right
away, from the difficulty of getting the nec¬
essary capital.

-------------------<   o   >■------------------

THE CROP  QUESTION.

Colonel Grosvenor, of the Public, has
given a good deal of consideration to the
wheat crop, and his conclusion is that it can
not be much, if any, less than last year.
He admits there wiU be some deficiency in
the winter wheat crop of the Middle States,
but the spring wheat of the northwest will
more than make up for this deficiency. He
shows very conclusively, that the National
Miller's Association, whose prediction that
the crop will be 150,000,000 bushels short,
has been .widely published, made similar
statements last year and the year before at
this time, and that they unconsciously work
in the interest of the bulls in wheat. Foreign
crops, it is admitted, will be good, so wheat
is destined to rule low whether we have a
large or only a naoderate harvest.

But, of course, this is all speculation and
the size of the crop must remain an open
question until the 20th of July. If there is
a moderately good crop, we look for very
qigh figures in the northwestern stocks, for